’That night she saw (as she firmly believed to the end of her life) a divinely sent vision.  A procession of her lost relatives—­father, brother, uncle, cousin—­seemed to cross her chamber between her bed and the window, and when she endeavoured to trace their features she perceived them to be headless, and that she had recognized them by their familiar clothes only.  In the morning she could not shake off the effects of this appearance on her nerves.  All that day she saw nothing of her wooer, he being occupied in making arrangements for their departure.  It grew towards evening—­the marriage eve; but, in spite of his re-assuring visit, her sense of family duty waxed stronger now that she was left alone.  Yet, she asked herself, how could she, alone and unprotected, go at this eleventh hour and reassert to an affianced husband that she could not and would not marry him while admitting at the same time that she loved him?  The situation dismayed her.  She had relinquished her post as governess, and was staying temporarily in a room near the coach-office, where she expected him to call in the morning to carry out the business of their union and departure.

’Wisely or foolishly, Mademoiselle V—–­ came to a resolution:  that her only safety lay in flight.  His contiguity influenced her too sensibly; she could not reason.  So packing up her few possessions and placing on the table the small sum she owed, she went out privately, secured a last available seat in the London coach, and, almost before she had fully weighed her action, she was rolling out of the town in the dusk of the September evening.

’Having taken this startling step she began to reflect upon her reasons.  He had been one of that tragic Committee the sound of whose name was a horror to the civilized world; yet he had been only one of several members, and, it seemed, not the most active.  He had marked down names on principle, had felt no personal enmity against his victims, and had enriched himself not a sou out of the office he had held.  Nothing could change the past.  Meanwhile he loved her, and her heart inclined to as much of him as she could detach from that past.  Why not, as he had suggested, bury memories, and inaugurate a new era by this union?  In other words, why not indulge her tenderness, since its nullification could do no good.

’Thus she held self-communion in her seat in the coach, passing through Casterbridge, and Shottsford, and on to the White Hart at Melchester, at which place the whole fabric of her recent intentions crumbled down.  Better be staunch having got so far; let things take their course, and marry boldly the man who had so impressed her.  How great he was; how small was she!  And she had presumed to judge him!  Abandoning her place in the coach with the precipitancy that had characterized her taking it, she waited till the vehicle had driven off, something in the departing shapes of the outside passengers against the starlit sky giving her a start, as she afterwards remembered.  Presently the down coach, “The Morning Herald,” entered the city, and she hastily obtained a place on the top.